Wings
by ThoroughlySherlocked
Summary: The first time I noticed Sherlock's wings was also the first time I had worked on a case with him. I knew that wings meant the person had a highly developed sense of self, that they were human, that those who didn't have one or weren't human were either wingless or winged with wings the colour of pinkish-grey brain matter. Sherlock's wings were pitch-black. Johnlock.


**DISCLAIMER: Yeah, I own Sherlock and Sir ACD's stories. Moffat and Gatiss work under me. I wish that would happen someday, but right now, I still don't own anything. This is for Motaki- Merry Christmas, mate!**

January 29, 2011

Oh. Hello.

Before I say anything, this is not my idea. Not my fault, not my creation, not my doing.

It's all Ella's. Apparently, I would 'recover from my PTSD quickly if I wrote down my thoughts, John dear, are you listening, in a diary'.

The only reason I'm doing this is because something's happened.

Something big.

Sherlock's death (actually, wasn't it suicide?) anniversary is today.

Time to celebrate.

I even got two presents.

The first time I noticed Sherlock's wings was also the first time I had worked on a case with him. I knew that wings meant the person had a highly developed sense of self, that they were human, that those who didn't have one or weren't human were either wingless or winged with wings the colour of pinkish-grey brain matter.

Sherlock's wings were pitch-black.

"Wings," I had breathed. "You've got wings. They're fantastic."

And so they were.

Pitch-black, the feathers caught the light and shimmered like a ribbon of shadowy oil, glinting darkly when you looked straight at them; they seemed to almost shift and change and morph every second.

I was shocked.

Sherlock had a sense of self. Sherlock was human.

Sherlock. Had. Wings.

Sherlock.

Wings. Those two words in a sentence, well, didn't go together.

But still, reality was undeniable.

There were big, black, thirteen-foot long feathered appendages that sprouted from my flatmate's back.

Amazing.

All in all, that wasn't so terribly unusual. Harry, my sister, before she had gotten drunk and emotionally unstable, had had a pair; they had been deep orange and frankly, hideous.

To have wings was one of the highest honours one could receive; it meant that you were brilliant and stable and physically and emotionally accepting of yourself.

In case you're wondering, I didn't have a pair. Figures.

When one goes to Afghanistan, one gains certain things, but loses some as well. My loss(es)? Something called PTSD, a deep, scarred wound in the shoulder, and emotional trauma which resulted in a (Sherlock correctly deduced it) psychosomatic leg wound and an inability to have wings.

Harry had once said that wings determine your personality, that if you changed then your wing colour would never be the same.

I had never believed her.  
Until Sherlock.

That day in St. Bart's lab, he seemed cold, calculating; a genius in the most imperfect sense of the word.  
And he was.  
He kept body parts in the fridge, poisons on the kitchen table, papers strewn haphazardly around the flat.  
His wings always were black then, not changing colour as he strode from case to case, homicide to serial suicide, wearing his coat –charcoal grey, made out of feathers and red patches of blood and white insults and lavish, sunburst like deductions, sewn into a fabric of dark energy-, dragging me along with him.  
Another reason why I could never have wings is because this thing that I have.  
Not wings, something else.  
It's… er… I can tell their darkest secrets, their deepest personality, just by looking at them.  
No, not 'observing' like Sherlock does. It's unnatural, honestly.  
Not by the colour and shape of their wings, either.  
Oh, and no, I couldn't do it before he died.  
Again, when one loses something, one gets something back in return. I've realised that this is the law of the universe.

Yes, I realise that this is all rather fast, and so what? Do I care?  
I probably should start at the day it all began.  
When was that? I don't know. Let's simply start at the point where I meet Sherlock, see his wings, and he asks to borrow my mobile.

I walked down a nondescript tree-lined avenue, cane in hand like some sort of war memorial, each dull thump it made against the ground reminiscent of the music of heavy gunfire in Afghanistan.  
In the next five hours, I would shred my old life of living in a tedious bedsit, rip it, tear it thoroughly, scatter its remains like little fragments of dusty paper and strew them everywhere.  
But of course, I didn't know that.  
Stamford was the one who first introduced us.  
It was one of those days- the sun was a bright ray of fire, sewn with a thread of dark, foreboding indigo clouds into a scratch piece of azure silk that was the sky. Some careless person had dipped a pen in a bottle of white ink and drawn classic clouds across it.  
Of course a beautiful day would be the one in which I killed a cabbie.  
Stamford had led me into the lab, dropping off his coat at a chair, watching our interaction play out from the side-lines.  
I merely gawped at the stranger. He was tall, lanky even, and he was (God, what was that?) experimenting on what looked like a brain.  
He had razor sharp cheekbones and cheeks that were sexily sunken, and a lean, muscled frame that was showcased by his tight, tight, shirt and flaring coat.  
But the thing(s) that drew me most towards Sherlock Holmes were:

His eyes.

His wings.

His mind.

His eyes, to put it simply, were mesmerising. They were pools of steel-dipped water, building a wall inside of which lay his emotions. The colours spun and twirled, dancing with each other in a dance of timeless beauty and grace; spiralling, spiralling, pulling you into their depths like a rogue current does to humans who dare swim in it.  
His wings… were beautiful, to say the least. He had previously been a broadwing raven; the curves at the edges were keepsakes of that, but even from a distance of three, maybe four metres, seven lines of steel-blue feathers were visible.  
So he was changing.  
Changing from broadwing raven to falcon.  
Changing from pure darkness and sheer brilliance to aforementioned brilliance, lighter darkness (does that even make sense?) and seven rows of protective instinct.  
Seven rows. That was it. But it was enough for me to know that this man, like me, had had a life that was shattered in thousands of pieces and spread all over the floor for him to reconstruct.  
He had.  
And the fact that such a cold person had wings was amazing.  
His mind was one of the most brilliant and piercingly keen ever conceived by a human.  
Need I explain anything else here?  
From what I gathered at first sight, Sherlock Holmes was a remarkable man.  
I would later find that my observation had been absolutely correct.  
It was the summer of 2010 when Sherlock had received a case. Good thing, I had thought; the walls, if this trend had been continued, would not stand to last the week.  
He was a child, a macabre child whose emotional growth was stunted like a tree in wintertime, still stuck in that space between mature and childish.  
He had been 'summoned' by Lestrade- something to do with a mobile and the Greenwich Pips and a bomber.

I don't know how to describe what happened on that case, but Sherlock's wings changed. In the time it took to solve the bomber's puzzles, they…just… morphed. The colours flipped from a miniscule seven lines of steely blue to a stretch that took up a half wing.  
It happened, I noticed, right after the woman died due to Sherlock's milking the clock.  
(And if observing my male flatmate's lower back seems to be homosexual behaviour, let me futilely say: I am NOT gay.)  
Back to my story.  
Sherlock truly did have emotion then. He was not a high-functioning sociopath, as he proclaimed, but a living, caring, human being who had for some reason decided to hide his emotions under a wall of pure determination and iron willpower.  
In retrospect, I should have realised this before. The way Sherlock actually made efforts to bring milk and keep the more- ah- disturbing experiments off of the kitchen table and out of the refrigerator a mere two months after becoming my flatmate was proof that should have been evident ages ago.  
Proof was in no short supply after that.

Sherlock had texted a bomber. Sherlock. Had. Texted. A. Bomber.  
Texted a bomber.  
Really, that shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. My flatmate was one to do things that would be viewed downright insane by the normal world- take gambling with death to prove his cleverness, for example. That one showed up a lot in our cases.  
According to Sherlock's plan, we were going to meet the bomber at a swimming pool.  
After a rather violent fight with the Golem, I had been kidnapped and coated in a Semtex vest, laden with explosives, turned into a living firework, ready to play the part of his next mule.  
I won't tell you who, though, (hint- it was not the Golem) until we get Sherlock here as well. It makes it so much better.  
Sherlock arrived and saw me. Trussed up like a 5'2" human pyrotechnic display.  
He broadcast messages to Sherlock from my earpiece.  
The distrust and hurt on Sherlock's face was evident. His thoughts, instead of being enclosed inside the wall he had built to protect himself, played on his face the way opening credits play onscreen- was John really the bomber? Had the Army doctor fooled him, Sherlock Holmes, so completely?-.  
And then Sherlock saw him. The man who'd been talking to Sherlock through my earpiece, the one who'd given him the puzzles, the one who'd killed no less than five people, maybe more; he was a pool of pure concentrated evil.  
Jim- Jim from IT, who'd been Molly's latest boyfriend, the gay man who'd so obviously tried to get Sherlock.  
No. Not Jim. Moriarty.  
How fitting. The name sounded like a serpent's hiss, like something uttered by a spider at the centre of a web of criminals.  
The Devil himself wore Westwood.  
My flatmate had known that he'd had two choices- either to blow the bomb and kill Moriarty or shoot me.  
Sherlock's eyes had been wide with concern, the greens and blues and greys and golds all merging together in a maelstrom of colour which belied his granite composure.  
Looking back, I almost wished he'd shot me. Then I wouldn't have had to go through Sherlock's death anniversary.  
He didn't, though.  
That incident made the heaviest impact on him. He'd cared enough about me that he'd be willing to die for me.  
That thought made his wings moult and shed until there was a single raven-black feather amidst a sea of steely blue.  
A single feather.  
A single remnant from his past.  
Even the curves of dark raven-hood were gone now, replaced by the almost menacing angles of a hawk's wings.  
Hawk was for protection, for emerging from a dark tunnel to be greeted with yet another, lighter one, for dying for your friends.  
Sherlock cocked the trigger and shot the bomb. The pool exploded, throwing us into the water. My flatmate looked near dead- perhaps he already was?  
"Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock." I muttered urgently. Was he alive or dead? Then, after a time: "John?" A single word, said quietly, almost whispered. "John?"  
I breathed a sigh of relief.  
Two things before I approach the last bit of my saga- it's rather painful for me as well, so I will procrastinate, anything to help delay the inevitable-

I desperately wanted wings- or rather, the honour wings gave-.

My wish for wings would be granted in the form of a welcome distraction from Sherlock's death- and his homecoming.

But that comes later. For now, to business.

I wish, right now, that he'd shot me and gotten rid of me. Sherlock becoming a terrible man and killing me was preferable to the agony of the past few years.  
First, I'd let Sherlock commit suicide by letting him hare off to Bart's and leaving him for Mrs Hudson.  
Second, Moriarty had threatened to kill me, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade if Sherlock didn't kill himself. The sheer insanity of the man shocks me still. The thought of dying was not so disturbing, but when one gets back from the Army, one realises that life is like a flower in midwinter: fragile, sickly, it can die with a mere touch.  
Third, Sherlock had committed suicide and left me on my own. Not that I wasn't perfectly capable of managing without him, but I admit- I looked towards the Browning on the mantelpiece more than once and wondered how a cold iron muzzle felt inside my mouth or on my temple.  
Rambling, aren't I?  
It all started with the deerstalker and the break-ins.  
As the 'Hero of the Reichenbach, he'd been presented with a deerstalker which promptly flew out the window. He attracted Moriarty's attention as well as the presses. Not that he didn't appreciate the consulting criminal going out of his way to make sure that he wasn't bored.

To prove that he was cleverer than Sherlock, Moriarty broke into Pentonville Prison, the Crown Jewels, and the Bank of England. Sherlock figured out that there was no code and Moriarty was just fooling with him, trying to prove himself cleverer than Sherlock. Actually, Moriarty told that to him on the rooftop. However, let's get back on track.  
I wouldn't have mentioned this case if it weren't for his wings. You can of course predict that they changed in this case.  
The time his wings changed was when he was about to die.  
Fitting, really. Last wishes and dying nobly and all that. But this was Sherlock Holmes, he was a remarkable man, the least one to adhere to a stereotype and obey someone else's rules.  
We were on a wild run around London, trying to avoid the police, who, thanks to Donovan and Anderson, were convinced that Sherlock had committed all of the crimes, hired an actor named Richard Brook to play big criminal Moriarty, and then 'solved' them.

Leaping over a six-foot fence, (well, Sherlock leaped, I struggled to get up) hand in hand, a constant stream of GodnoI'mnotgaynotgaynotgaynotgay set itself up in my head. Even more so when Sherlock grabbed me by my waist and shoved me into the wall of an alleyway. Rationally, I knew that it was for my own safety, but the subconscious can be…er… ah, let's just say obnoxious at times.  
You know what, let's cut off that stream of thought right now. People will talk, but no. The fire doesn't need to be fuelled any more than is strictly necessary.  
Back to writing, then.  
We rounded a corner, still clasping each other's hands, Sherlock talking at breakneck speed. "What does he want me to do, what's the answer to this problem? The Final Problem, John, what…oh." He trailed off into silence, steely wings brushing the pavement gently. His eyes turned into a turbulent mix of blue-grey-green-gold like they had at the pool. I knew him better than anyone else ever has; perhaps better than anyone else ever will, and I could see right then that Sherlock was scared. He regained his composure and continued, a knife-thin edge of sharpness cutting his voice. "John, stay here."  
I wondered aloud if I could be of any help.  
"No. I've got to do this alone."  
Sherlock hared off to Bart's because that's where I found him next.  
I'm going to procrastinate here and cut it off, because when one's best friend commits suicide, it's really rather painful. It feels as though you were a fragile glass instrument and someone carelessly dropped you to the ground, where you shattered into thousands of sharp shards. Then it is up to you to piece yourself back together. If you don't, there's always suicide to contemplate.  
That night nothing happened, which is why it'll be excluded from my retelling.  
The next day, however, would be fucking awful. I didn't know that, though. Otherwise, I would have stopped him from dying.

He sat in a lab at Saint Bart's, bouncing a rubber ball and thinking. His suit was mussed, as though he had spent the night there.  
Which he had.  
I ran into the laboratory in the hospital, wanting Sherlock to come back with me because Mrs Hudson was hurt.  
Sherlock's wing-tips brushed the floor as he picked up his phone, sharply stated that he would not come and texted Moriarty.  
Moriarty agreed to play his game.  
I turned tail and left, to attend to Mrs Hudson's wound.  
Something had changed in Sherlock's wings.  
The raven feather was moulting, as well, although it was only halfway through. His eyes and wings belied his iron composure as he told me to leave.  
The next time I saw Sherlock Holmes, he would be an inch from death.

I got out of the cab.  
Sherlock was standing like a sentinel of doom on the rooftop. He phoned me, (rather unusual for Sherlock, he always preferred to text, but maybe that was one of the ways I was changing him)  
And told me good-bye, told me that he was a fake; he told me that he was going to die (actually, he told me he was going to kill himself.)  
Even though Sherlock was standing on the rooftop of Bart's, his wings shone brightly in the last remnants of the sun. They glinted, steel and iron willpower, brilliance, and I was reminded of a wolf.  
He leaned back, tossed the phone on the roof, and fell.  
During the four seconds it took him to fall, his wings changed once more.  
The single raven-black feather, moulting, altering, changing, slowly transformed into a steel-blue masterpiece.  
Sherlock had not only become a good man, but an excellent one in four seconds.  
The feather shimmered and as if in slow motion, fell from Sherlock's wing.  
A second later, he hit the ground with a sickening crunch.  
Blue-grey eyes stared blankly up at me, their multitude of colours gone, vanished, never to be filled with life again.  
Red blood spattered over his pale, ivory-like skin.  
A charcoal coat splayed wide. Wings unfolded, raindrops glistening on the feathers.  
Raven to falcon.  
Great to good.  
He was the most beautiful casualty I had ever seen.  
Grey eyes. Red blood. Pale skin. Steely blue wings.  
It was a magazine-worthy image.  
I picked up his feather, the one that had turned from black to blue as he fell. No matter what he told me to believe, no matter what anyone else told me to believe, I would believe in Sherlock Holmes.

It is three years after the Fall.  
Sherlock.  
Dead.  
Scarlet blood. Grey eyes. Steely wings.  
Beautiful casualty.  
I was glad that the last words I had said to Sherlock had not been 'you machine'.  
It is January 29th, Sherlock's death anniversary.  
Time to celebrate.  
I even got two presents.  
One from Sherlock and one from myself.

I sit on the rooftop of Saint Bart's as I write this. Whoever finds this, say good-bye to Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Ella, Harry, Sarah, all the people I've ever cared about for me. I can't do this. I can't look then in the eye before I jump.  
And how fitting for me to do this. It's Sherlock's death anniversary, after all. This is the way he died. Let's celebrate it by doing the same.  
I stand on the rooftop of Saint Bart's, staring down at London traffic below. It looks so small, as though one gust of wind could knock it over like paper caught in a breeze. I wonder if anyone is thinking of Sherlock.  
He died to save my life.  
I close my eyes. When I open them, he is there.  
I don't cry because Sherlock is there by my side, a mere figment of my imagination, but still there.  
I say what I've never gotten the chance to say to him in reality. It is only three words. Three powerful words.

I. Love. You.

As I say them, I hear a beating of wings. I don't pay them any attention, because they are not important. What matters is here and now.

"Good-bye, Sherlock," I breath, and fall.

I give myself the present of trying to be with Sherlock again.

It is like nothing I have ever experienced. The wind rushes through my hair, twisting it into a thousand different knots with its slim, agile fingers. The ground grows and bulges, distorts into large trucks and even larger streets.

I know that I am going to die.

But I don't.

A pair of strong arms catches me as I prepare for touchdown. Wings beat, their black feathers fluttering, straining to lift me up.

I look up. Sherlock is bearing me up towards the rooftop. It all sounds so cliché, like a romance novel, but it's not. This is Sherlock, and for him to outwardly express emotion is like having a blue moon twice in a year. This is my second present- Sherlock giving me the gift of one more chance at life.

We land safely. I am a mix of emotions. Anger, happiness, sadness, pure gratitude. I don't know which one is which.

Raising my fist, I punch Sherlock, carefully avoiding his nose and teeth. He looks down, knowing that he deserved it.

His eyes are once more a turmoil of blue-grey-green-gold.

"You…fucking…PRAT. How dare you leave me alone for three years and suddenly appear out of thin air? Have you any idea of the grief you caused me?" I scream, grabbing Sherlock and trying to shake my grief into him, trying to make him understand the pain he had put me through.

"It was for your own good."

This undoes me, and I'm suddenly weighed down with the implications of Sherlock coming back from the dead.

I clutch him for dear life and I don't care about what people say, what they will think, if they see me and Sherlock hugging like this.

My best friend wraps his arms a little awkwardly around my back.

His wings are half-raven, half-falcon; he has become a bit darker, a bit more uncivilised. There are track marks and needle scars on his arms, clear signs that he is using drugs. But I don't care. He is my Sherlock, and I am his John.

We hug there, on the rooftop. His wings unfold and wrap their whole thirteen-foot length around my back.

The only reason I'm doing describing our hug is because something's happened.

Something big.

Sherlock's death (actually, wasn't it suicide?) anniversary is today.

Time to celebrate.

I even got two presents.

I tried to commit suicide and treated myself to try and be with Sherlock again.

Sherlock gave me a gift, greater than anything money could buy. Sherlock gave me a second chance at life.

God, I hope nobody finds my diary. Then people will talk. What? You're probably thinking.

Let's get the non-humiliating part over with first.

Today, I began to observe. I could tell that Sherlock had changed because of his coat- instead of its usual black colour and dark bloodstains, it has been cleaned. The lavish deductions are still there. But white, bitter insults no longer line it.

I see that I've changed as well. My coat no longer has the dark lining of contemplating suicide, and holes, clear markers of PTSD and trust issues, have been sewn together neatly.

It's probably because Sherlock and I've been together now. Officially.

It's just a snog here and there, hugging in Angelo's, nothing big. But I've finally gotten over everything.

My shredded body was completely sewn back together by an expert hand in a moment.

That moment was when Sherlock saved me, gave me one more chance at life, and hugged me on the rooftop of St. Bart's.

**AN: Please use the review box down there. It's meant to offer feedback, and that is exactly what you should be doing. If you are Motaki, did you catch the falcon reference? XD**  
**To the rest of you: Need I repeat once more that the review box is supposed to be used? Con-crit is also greatly appreciated, and if I can find your profile, I will thank you.**  
**Thank you for reading!**


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